The lllrd meeting of the
Technical Committee of
Experts of the Economic
Commission for Africa was
held in Addis-Ababa from
September 2 to 8, 1972.
FRELIMO, an associate
member of the E.C.A. was
represented at the meeting
which was in preparation
for the Ministerial Conference to take place next
year in Accra.
We quote from our report
to the Committee:
Economic
development
in the
liberated
areas
It might appear to some that it is out of
place for a Liberation Movement to speak
of development, for a people who are still
having to fight for their liberation to concern themselves with national reconstruction.
Yet it is only logical that those who wish
to liberate themselves should know what
to do with their freedom, and all the more
so when such a high price in bloodshed
has to be paid for regaining it. Furthermore, and this is just as important, the
actual situation now prevailing in Mozambique is such that the question of economic and social development arises as an
immediate problem.
The armed action of our people has
started to bear fruit.
At the present time, there are large areas
of our national territory in which the
colonial army makes its presence felt
only through the air force, having been
forced to evacuate vast regions.
Today, there are vast liberated areas in
Mozambique which extend over more
than 200,000 square kilometres, i.e. a
quarter of our national territory, and
which are inhabited by about a million
people.
In these liberated areas, which are in
Cabo Delgado, Niassa and Tete provinces,
the Mozambican people, under the leadership of FRELIMO, have embarked on the
process of national reconstruction with
the aim of meeting the growing needs.
Our first concern was to ensure agricultural production sufficient both to meet
our people's needs in food and to produce some surpluses which could be exported in order to provide the means for
obtaining essential manufactured goods
which had completely disappeared with
the   withdrawal   of Portuguese   traders.
True, it was a question of getting agricultural production going again, but structural changes also had to be made in this
field. Indeed, since production had been
subject to the principles of the «colonial
pact», we had to replace products for the
colonial economy - cotton and oil plants
with others which could feed the
masses properly, since, for very good reasons, those products could no longer
find their way to the traditional markets
and we had neither the means nor the
technology to use them ourselves. Therefore cotton growing had to be stopped in
the liberated areas, whereas oil plant production was reduced for a while and later
increased again when we started to find
markets in friendly countries. Conversely, there has been a substantial increase
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